Once a vital source of future-facing visions and reforms, progressive movements today are struggling to convince voters and win elections. Between 2003 and 2015, centre-left parties have lost vote shares in key European countries, including Denmark, Finland, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Sweden and the United Kingdom; in southern states, such as Greece, they face electoral decimation. Most notably, they are pressured from all sides of the political spectrum, squeezed between new radical left forces, populist far-right parties, and a centre-right that is determined to claim the centre ground. Progressive parties must change, or risk dying. Survival in their current form seems less and less likely. To escape the trap of electoral insignificance this book offers progressives three areas of practical policy substance that they should absorb in order to maintain life, and possibly even growth.
First, developments in information and communication technology are arguably producing a ‘fourth’ industrial revolution, driven by innovations in artificial intelligence, big data, industrial robotics or an ‘internet of things’. For policymakers and workers, the digital economy offers great opportunities – the chance for entrepreneurs to develop new, efficient and innovative businesses creating jobs, economic growth and high returns on investment – and high risks, especially for unskilled workers in traditional industries, placing huge strains on existing social security systems. It also presents an opportunity for centre-left revival as it is commonly progressives who believe that ‘the future is a challenge to be embraced and not a curse to be avoided’. If the left is to harness the energy and the opportunities of the digital and innovation economy, it needs to drastically upgrade its policy offer and be radical again in its approach to transforming the state. Such efforts include new thinking on how data and technology drive citizen engagement, a reform agenda that attracts finances for the economic recovery or the promotion of skills relevant to hi-tech jobs in a digital economy.
Second, a generation ago, social democrats hoped and believed that the knowledge economy would increase demand for skills and higher levels of human capital. However, the reality is that there is greater evidence of labour market polarisation and heightened tensions and distributional conflicts between labour market ‘outsiders’ and ‘insiders’. Embracing the innovation economy is crucial for progressive politics but the risk remains that in its current form it is not benefitting a wide segment of society. The challenge for the centre-left is to articulate a credible strategy that accommodates greater risk-taking and accepts economic and technological disruption while offering policies that create social cohesion, stability and security. This has to be at the heart of a forward-looking centre-left vision: one rooted in the future of work rather than the future of the welfare state.
Third, the challenges of building new coalitions in a ‘high risk, high opportunity’ innovation-based economy comes as traditional parties are losing ground to social movements with distinctive insurgent styles and cultures of communication. Many mainstream parties are locked in 20th century thinking attached to traditional models of political organisation and communication while the world and the public have moved on. If social democrats are to argue for open societies, embrace digital platforms while advocating transparency and ‘creative destruction’, they also need to apply these principles to their own movements. Social-democratic parties have to reconsider the way they are constituted; their organisational form, internal politics and civic culture.
Change – not standing still – lies at the heart of any progressive policy agenda. The need for change is ever more apparent as we are living in an age of heightened risk regarding citizen’s economic and physical security. At the same time there are many new opportunities: centre-left parties must resist being harbingers of doom.
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Florian Ranft is a policy researcher at Policy Network. Aiming High: Progressive Politics in a High-Risk, High-Opportunity Era was published by Rowman & Littlefield.
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